


like you need a hand to hold

by zenstrike



Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [35]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, bickering like an old married couple klance, fOOLS as usual, im canadian sue me, lovey dovey fools, not sappy but still...sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Lance has a cold. Or the flu?
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1057949
Comments: 45
Kudos: 251





	like you need a hand to hold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZorahNicole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZorahNicole/gifts).



> to be clear this is not The Sick Lance fic, that’s the next one, but it is -a- sick lance fic, inspired by a tweet from zorah which said: “I’ve got a case of the sniffles so I’m thinkin abt how when Lance gets sick keith probably turns into mother hen 🥺he’s overbearing and way too concerned bc Lance is “barely even THAT sick” but it’s still very endearing”
> 
> this isn’t technically the next part of yltwil but it’s A part and that’s all that matters. here are the silly boys.
> 
> i haven’t read it thoroughly yet but i’ll take another peek on a break tomorrow. please enjoy!!

“What’s that?” Lance said, hunched on the couch and cradling a cup of ginger and lemon tea.

Keith waved a thin box at him. “A thermometer.”

“For meat?”

“For you!”

Lance frowned. He breathed in and out through his mouth and straightened the tissue he had shoved up his left nostril. “Go away.”

Keith ignored him and dropped onto the couch, prying open the box and shaking out the curved, grey thermometer. Lance shuffled away from him, his hip knocking into the armrest of their battered, beautiful couch.

“It looks dirty,” Lance said.

“It’s clean.”

“No,” Lance corrected, sniffing around his tissue. “It looks  _ dirty _ .”

Keith looked at him, scowling. “It’s for babies, Lance.”

“I’m not a baby!”

Keith ignored him and shoved the batteries into a compartment on the back, snapping the cover back into place more seriously than Lance thought was strictly necessary. “You’re sick,” Keith said, lifting the thermometer like a prize, like a wand, maybe like a nice, tingly glass of champagne.

Lance sniffed again. “I have a cold.”

“You are  _ sick _ with a  _ cold _ .”

“Go away,” Lance repeated, wiggling against the couch cushions and pressing his mug of tea against his cheek. “Take your baby thermometer and leave me alone.”

Keith gestured with it— _ en garde! _ , Lance thought half deliriously. “Let me check your temperature.”

“Go away!”

“I’m going to check your temperature.”

“It’s normal! It’s cold-like! Go away!”

“If it’s above 40 I’m taking you to the hospital,” Keith said.

Lance bared his teeth. “I don’t speak American.”

“You know normal body temperature in celsius?” Keith scoffed.

“I don’t know what a normal temperature is in farenheit!”

“Below 40,” Keith replied, too easily, and all but leaped the rest of the way across the couch.

The thermometer’s nubbed smooth end was cool and almost soft against Lance’s forehead, momentarily freezing him to his spot and leaving his protests stalled in his throat. His shoulders dropped. Part of his blanket pile slipped from around his shoulders.

“Huh,” he mumbled. “I thought you were gonna have to, like—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—stick it in me. Somewhere.”

“Christ, Lance.”

“Don’t make it weird, Keith.”

“Yes,” Keith said drily. “I’m the one who made it weird.”

“You usually do.”

The thermometer beeped. Keith drew back and lowered the thermometer and, together, they leaned over it.

“Fine,” Keith said. “No hospital.”

“Even if it was above 40,” Lance said. “I shouldn’t go to a hospital.”

“Sick people go to hospitals.”

“Flus are different! What if I had a flu, or something, and I go to the hospital and I get, like, a little kid sick! Boom, a crisis! All so a doctor can tell me to go home and go to bed.”

“I thought you had a cold,” Keith grumbled, shoving the thermometer back into its box. He tossed it haphazardly onto the coffee table.

“Yeah, well, probably.” Lance fidgeted some more. He took a messy slurp of his tea. “Just saying. It’s a nasty flu season. And whatever.”

“So it’s not a cold.”

“I’m just saying!”

Keith leaned back and crossed his arms. He was still wearing his university hoodie, the thick and ridiculous one that had his initials on the hood and a volleyball on his left sleeve. His hair was messy from the early winter wind and snow, giving him a wild-eyed mother hen look that warmed Lance in all the places where he was already too warm and too cold.

Lance smiled.

“Have you taken anything?” Keith said.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Medicine.”

Keith squinted at him.

“I’m not useless! It’s just a cold!”

“Is it a cold or is it flu!”

“Does it matter,” Lance grumbled and pressed his face into his mug. The tea was cooling now but still smelled lovely and comforting in all the ways that made him think of home. “I’m just sick, but I’m going to get better.” His voice came all echoed and a ceramic-induced version of tinny.

“I don’t believe you,” Keith said without hesitation.

“You’re a turd, sometimes.”

“ _ You _ like to mope and suffer until you’re inches from death.”

“You think a headache brings me inches from death.”

“Maybe I do,” Keith allowed. He kicked out his legs and cast another glance at the thermometer.

“Don’t do it,” Lance said, lifting his head from the mug.

Keith sighed.

“I’ve eaten,” Lance said. “I made some of those noodle things you like to gorge yourself on.”

“Garbage food is still food I guess.”

Lance beamed.

Keith squirmed.

Lance batted at the tissue hanging from his nose. “Do you like my attempts at seduction?” he said, nasally and cheerful.

“Yes,” Keith said. “Very sexy. All—germy and handsome.”

“You’re a good boyfriend,” Lance decided.

“Sometimes,” Keith said gruffly. “Are you done with your tea?”

“Maybe.”

“Give it. I’ll warm it up.”

Lance huffed a sigh and surrendered the mug. “Nah, don’t,” he said. “I’m going to just lie down, I think.”

“Good idea.”

“And you,” Lance said, sagging over the armrest and dragging his blankets tighter around himself. “Should go away and stay away. Before I get you stupid sick or whatever.”

“I’m immune to the stupid sick,” Keith said as he stood. “Or whatever.”

Lance watched him wander into the kitchen and listened to the rush of water in the sink and the beep of their electric kettle. Keith sighed, once or twice, and Lance tucked his smile against a blanket. Slowly, he lowered fully against the couch, his head hanging heavy and almost uncomfortably against the saggy couch cushions. He watched the blank TV screen for a time, breathing slowly in and out of his mouth and trying to remember what normal face-feeling was like. He adjusted his nose-tissue.

Keith returned and stood over him, frowning with his fists clenching and relaxing at his sides at odd, unmeasurable intervals. Lance looked up at him without lifting his head.

“You came back,” he sniffed.

“Of course I did,” Keith replied. “I’m a good boyfriend.”

Lance snorted and pulled his blankets a little higher over his shoulder. “Go away, Keith.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“It’s just a cold.”

“Doesn’t look like a cold.”

“You a doctor now?”

“I could be,” Keith grunted. “I could go to med school. People would call me Doctor Keith and I would make the big bucks so we could afford all your face stuff.”

“You know how your face is always dry and your scratch your cheeks to high hell?” Lance grumbled. “I can help with that.”

Keith shook his head. “Shove your legs over for a minute.”

“You can’t sit! You’ll get sick!”

“I’m immune.”

“Sometimes, you’re dumb.” Lance dragged his legs up again all the same and Keith dropped next to him.

“Here,” he said and dragged Lance’s legs back onto his lap.

“Sickness,” Lance moaned. “It spreads. We’ll both die. And who will look after our Red?”

“Hunk.”

“True.”

Keith rubbed idly at his legs before his hands settled, warm and steady, on Lance’s ankles. “I’m making you another soup.”

“Thanks,” Lance sighed. “But I’m not hungry.”

“And a NeoCitran.  _ That _ you should definitely take. It’ll help with your—face.”

“And here I thought you found my tissue attractive.”

“I find all of you attractive,” Keith replied. “And because I love and cherish you, I’d rather if you didn’t lay on the couch all night suffering.”

“Life is suffering you sap.”

“What made you like this?”

“Four siblings,” Lance said. “Four parents.”

“Right.”

“Can you turn on the TV?”

“What do you want to watch?”

“Anything,” Lance said. “Anything—mindless. YouTube videos. MasterChef.”

“Okay.” Keith squeezed one of his ankles. “Don’t fall asleep yet.”

“I’m not drinking your poison juice.”

“It tastes like lemon.”

“No, it tastes like hell masquerading as lemon.”

“Just take your medicine, please.”

Lance scowled but felt his stubbornness give way, like tightness loosening in his chest and letting air rest his abused nose. “Well, since you said please.”

“You make me sound worse than I am.”

“Nah,” Lance admitted. “You’re wonderful.”

“I want to check your temperature again.”

“What made  _ you _ like this?”

“Adam,” Keith replied honestly.

Lance laughed so hard his tissue slipped out of his nose, and then he laughed some more at Keith’s complaints about potential snot stains on their blankets.

***

He fell asleep at some point. A melon video on YouTube maybe, or a mid-stage challenge on MasterChef Canada. Either way, with the NeoCitran and an extra layer of blankets and Keith hands and mumbles nearby, he rolled onto a soothed sleep and relinquished his nose-tissue with only a little embarrassment.

He woke again to their apartment dark and his head fuzzy and with a shake and shiver in his hands. The TV was still on, quiet now and a little too bright for his tired eyes. At some point Keith had brought the mountain-shaped diffuser they’d splurged on a few weeks earlier and it was cycling through soothing light and spitting out a mist that Lance couldn’t smell. He attempted a sniff and his head ached, properly and piercingly.

He twisted. Keith was slumped back against the couch, head hanging back and hoodie abandoned next to him. His t-shirt looked a little bedraggled, stretched weirdly like he’d been tugging at it or like his hoodie had caught the fabric funny, and it all added to his messy-haired, handsome shape illuminated by the light from the TV and the diffuser.

Lance smiled, and thought that he wanted to sit up and cover Keith with a blanket.

But his cough came back, then, a stab in the middle of his chest that worked its way up his dry throat and made him pull the blankets over his head to hide his hacking. 

“Lance?” came Keith’s sleepy voice.

Lance spit out a half-panicked apology in between coughs.

“Why are you apologizing?” Keith said gruffly. “Here, sit up.”

Keith tugged away the blankets and pulled Lance up by his arm. Sitting upright renewed Lance’s dizziness and made the room and Keith’s frowning face spin, and then it passed, and the cough, as suddenly as they had both come.

“I’ll get you some water,” Keith said quietly.

“I can do it—”

“Don’t be dumb.”

“I’m not being dumb!”

“Just take the help!”

Lance hunched and scowled. He watched Keith stumble his way to his feet and make his jerky way across their little hall and into the sudden brightness of their kitchen. He cleared his throat. He shifted restlessly. And then he scrambled up with a blanket still wrapped around his shoulders and followed quietly after Keith.

Keith started when he turned around, holding a mostly-full glass of water. “ _ Christ _ , Lance.”

Lance grinned. “Gotcha.”

“Yes,” Keith grunted. “You got me. Drink the water and let’s go to bed.”

Lance shifted his grip on his blanket and took the glass. “You go to bed. I’ll stay out here.”

“What? No. Come to bed. You’ll sleep better on the bed.”

“I won’t sleep better until I  _ am _ better,” Lance scoffed. “And I don’t want to get you sick.”

“Red’ll miss you,” Keith said idly.

Lance scowled into the glass. “Fine,” he said. “Fine! But you have to eat a case of oranges.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“You  _ have _ to.”

Keith led him by the hand to their bedroom, Lance still clutching his water and the TV still mumbling away without them. Red was running on her wheel when they tumbled into bed, Lance sniffing and letting out another pathetic cough. It was nice like this, he decided when he’d deposited his glass on the nightstand and buried himself against their pillows.

“I’ll look after you,” Keith mumbled sleepily against his neck, warm against Lance’s back.

“Uh huh. You’re going to get sick.”

“I’m immune.”

“No,” Lance sighed, settling. “You’re not.”

***

(Hunk came bearing soup and more medicine, a mask covering half his face and his eyes saying all the things his pity for them wouldn’t let him voice.

“You guys’re just passing it between you now,” he said, standing at the foot of their bed.

“I’m getting better,” Lance sighed, arm tightening around Keith.

Keith wheezed against his neck, burrowed against Lance’s side.

“You exhaust me,” Hunk said with fondness.

“We should check his temperature.”

“‘m fine,” Keith groaned. “‘m immune.”

Lance, drowsy and warm, pressed his nose to Keith’s hair and dragged the blankets higher around them.

“I refuse to catch this,” Hunk sighed.)

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from house key by scott helman, which is a song i added to my yltwil on rec from someone on tumblr!! if it was you, blessings on your home.


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